Fatal Premonition (2016) short film review

An arrogant and newly-employed young man dreams of his death in the comedy short Fatal Premonition. Is it any good? Find out with our review, right here on Screen Critix.

Landon (played by David Esposito) is an egotistical and, frankly annoying, young businessman who has just been successful in gaining new employment at a local firm. Yet, it is not the chance of earning good money that excites him. No, it is the fact that Landon has now become the “boss” of his best friend, Ed (Ryan Crepack).

In order to celebrate the new job, Landon, Ed and another co-worker called Anthony (Steve Lo Biondo) decide to go out for drinks, but the night doesn’t last long, due to Landon’s behaviour. Once Landon has gone to bed, he receives a premonition of his death. Landon at first believes it’s just a strange coincidence when he sees his assailant the very next day, but the dream soon begins to turn to reality.

Directed and written by both David Esposito and Ryan Crepack, Fatal Premonition is a decent short film that has equal amounts of positives and negatives going for it. The film is obviously very low budget, with the four actors also doubling up as crew members. In fact, they make up the whole of the crew; four men to play every character and every crew member. It actually is something to be commended. They got stuck in and made a short film. In an industry filled with divas, it’s refreshing to see a group of people just making films because they love doing it.

The acting in Fatal Premonition is pretty decent. Esposito plays Landon as an arrogant idiot really well. So well though, that we don’t care whether the character lives or dies. I was actually hoping for the latter. Crepack, Lo Biondo and Dominik Zdzioch (as Oz) all did well in their roles too.

The problem with having such a small crew (that doubles as actors too mind) is the quality of the production suffers. The majority of the shots aren’t great, the sound is most likely recorded from an on-camera mic and the production design is very nearly non-existent. The film is also full of exposition. This is down to having no money, or that they didn’t try and gain favours from others. For example, the film is set in a car park, a front yard, and a car. We don’t get to see Landon’s interview (which I believe could have been humorous), nor the night out drinking. We are just told Landon had behaved badly instead of witnessing it for ourselves.

This is the catch-22 situation though. I know that Fatal Premonition needed the money to realise the vision that Esposito and Crepack had for the short, but it isn’t easy to raise funds when they only have one film on their resume – the 2014 short film The Intruder. I would like to see both Esposito and Crepack given a few thousand to make their next short. I’m positive they will do something great with it. Hopefully, they will also extend their crew. So they can concentrate on one or two roles, and not all of them.

Fatal Premonition is a decent short film, but it could have been so much better had the filmmakers had more people, money and locations at their disposal.